Anwar Sadat

Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian army officer and statesman who served as the third president of Egypt from 15 October 1970 until his assassination on 6 October 1981. A participant in the 1952 Revolution that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy, Sadat rose through the ranks under Gamal Abdel Nasser, becoming vice president in 1969. Following Nasser's death, he consolidated power by purging rivals and shifting Egypt's foreign policy from Soviet dependence toward alignment with the United States.

Sadat's presidency is defined by his initiation of the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, which aimed to reclaim territories lost in and restore Egyptian military credibility, followed by a dramatic pivot to diplomacy with his 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the 1978 Camp David Accords mediated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, leading to the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty—the first between Israel and an Arab state. For these efforts, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978. Domestically, he introduced the Infitah economic reforms to liberalize Egypt's socialist economy, fostering private enterprise but also exacerbating inequality and corruption. These policies, combined with the peace treaty, alienated much of the Arab world and fueled Islamist opposition, culminating in Sadat's assassination by army officers affiliated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad during a military parade.